Books for ‘brown’ kids, were ‘victim books’

When Chaz Young found that there was a lack of diversity in the heroes of best-selling young adult fiction available to her two mixed-race children she set about doing something about it.

Chaz has been married to husband Arnold for 27 years and they were both keen to ensure their children had a wide variety of literature to draw upon.

'When we tried to look for books for ‘brown’ kids, they were what I would call ‘victim books’ — (the characters of colour) were slaves or living in the slums — and there wasn’t anything more positive,' Said Chaz. 'I read a lot of young adult fiction, and it’s very hard to find characters of colour. There’s nothing wrong with white kids, it’s just that there seems to be a shortage of heroes (with diverse ethnicities).'

So Chaz created a mixed-race family similar to her own - a white mother, black father and two 'brown' children and began a series of books built on West African culture and mythology.

The stories focus on a mysterious box passed down from the children's paternal West African ancestors. The siblings manage to open the chest and discover a secret passage to the magical world of Fahdamin-Ra, where their royal bloodlines provide them with supernatural powers.

The narrator of the first and third books is the teenage daughter Celestine, based on the author's daughter Callista, who now attends college in Hawaii. The narrator of the second and upcoming fourth books is 12-year-old son Joel, written with now 20-year-old Toliver in mind.

Toliver Young, a Morse High School graduate who is now a sophomore at Southern Maine Community College, said he gravitated toward cartoons about animals and robots while growing up because, at the time, 'it was hard to find a (human) character I could relate to.'

Having her family members so closely tied to the characters in the books, Chaz Young said, helps keep the narrative styles in the different books distinct — and provides immediate feedback on the work.

'My daughter will pop up and say, ‘I don’t think Celestine would have done that,’ says Chaz.

Chaz has also done enough background research on West African culture — in particular the Yoruba tribe of Nigeria — that readers are often surprised to learn she’s a white woman from a predominantly white state in the U.S.

'If people have read my books and then they meet me, they expect me to be brown or black,' says the author, noting that one African reader assumed she was 'a Nigerian person living abroad.'

Travels to Fahdamin-Ra, the first book in the series gained honourable mention recognition in the annual Los Angeles Book Festival’s Young Adult category and Across the Savannah, the second book has been just as well recieved with a third on the way.

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Source: TimesRecord.com